A Christmas Bluffing Game
December 23, 2019 8:23 AM Subscribe
Comedian Sean Lock is reluctantly forced to play the holiday party game known as Carrot in Box
I have over the last few years become a devotee of BBC panel shows. Carrot in a Box is up there with the question of whether or not Kevin Bridges accidentally bought a horse as examples of why.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:37 AM on December 23, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:37 AM on December 23, 2019 [13 favorites]
Carrot in a Box has become essential Christmas viewing at our house over the last few years. You'd think it would get old, but it still makes me laugh every time.
posted by northernish at 8:44 AM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by northernish at 8:44 AM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
Is Carrot in a Box a thing other than on this chat show?
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 AM on December 23, 2019
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 AM on December 23, 2019
We have two close families over for Christmas Eve every year. One of the daughters tries to refuse to play games with our family because we are competitive and ruthless.
This is perfect.
posted by donpardo at 8:58 AM on December 23, 2019 [3 favorites]
This is perfect.
posted by donpardo at 8:58 AM on December 23, 2019 [3 favorites]
There are all these people whose faces I know from these sorts of clips, but I have no idea what their careers are outside of British game shows with 20 people in the audience.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:02 AM on December 23, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:02 AM on December 23, 2019 [11 favorites]
Is Carrot in a Box a thing other than on this chat show?
It is a sensation that is sweeping the nation!
No, in fact, it is a one-time thing that somehow happened twice.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:07 AM on December 23, 2019 [5 favorites]
It is a sensation that is sweeping the nation!
No, in fact, it is a one-time thing that somehow happened twice.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:07 AM on December 23, 2019 [5 favorites]
Grrr. Not able to get to YouTube from work- can anyone summarize the premise of the game?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:14 AM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:14 AM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
can anyone summarize the premise of the game?
There's a carrot in a box.
posted by The Bellman at 9:17 AM on December 23, 2019 [10 favorites]
There's a carrot in a box.
posted by The Bellman at 9:17 AM on December 23, 2019 [10 favorites]
There's a carrot in a box.
Are you sure?
posted by jacquilynne at 9:28 AM on December 23, 2019 [11 favorites]
Are you sure?
posted by jacquilynne at 9:28 AM on December 23, 2019 [11 favorites]
I suppose a tiny bit of the joke is that there was a British TV game show called "Golden Balls" with pretty much the same premise. The host of the show was Jasper Carrott, a singer/comedian partially responsible for unleashing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire into the world. The most "dramatic" instance of the show can be found here.
posted by user92371 at 9:32 AM on December 23, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by user92371 at 9:32 AM on December 23, 2019 [5 favorites]
Remember, Sean: Fear is the Mind-killer.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 10:01 AM on December 23, 2019
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 10:01 AM on December 23, 2019
Would I Lie to You, The Big Fat Quiz, and 8 out of 10 cats Does Countdown are a fixture of drinking wine on the couch after the kids are in bed for my wife and I.
Some of my favorites:
Royal Wedding
Did James Acaster try to drown himself?
Did James Acaster spend a night in a bush?
Did Greg Davies sleep in a bathtub at university?
Rob Brydon trying to steal Jimmy Carr's hosting role
posted by Quack at 10:18 AM on December 23, 2019 [10 favorites]
Some of my favorites:
Royal Wedding
Did James Acaster try to drown himself?
Did James Acaster spend a night in a bush?
Did Greg Davies sleep in a bathtub at university?
Rob Brydon trying to steal Jimmy Carr's hosting role
posted by Quack at 10:18 AM on December 23, 2019 [10 favorites]
"Jon talk me through how you're feeling" is delivered in such a way that only Jimmy Carr can
posted by numaner at 10:24 AM on December 23, 2019
posted by numaner at 10:24 AM on December 23, 2019
Also Richard Osman's House of Games and The Taskmaster. This is pretty much all we watch nowadays.
posted by 1adam12 at 11:21 AM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 11:21 AM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Shouldn't've underestimated Sean like that. After all, he grew up playing Spine in a Sack.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 11:32 AM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 11:32 AM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
can anyone summarize the premise of the game?
You want a carrot, and you want a carrot, but there's only one carrot. Let's play carrot in a box.
posted by biogeo at 11:54 AM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
You want a carrot, and you want a carrot, but there's only one carrot. Let's play carrot in a box.
posted by biogeo at 11:54 AM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
it is a one-time thing that somehow happened twice
Oddly enough, that's how Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown got started as well.
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 PM on December 23, 2019 [5 favorites]
Oddly enough, that's how Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown got started as well.
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 PM on December 23, 2019 [5 favorites]
I have no idea what their careers are outside of British game shows with 20 people in the audience
Jimmy Carr standup
Sean Lock standup
Jon Richardson standup
posted by flabdablet at 12:13 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Jimmy Carr standup
Sean Lock standup
Jon Richardson standup
posted by flabdablet at 12:13 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
I’ll also add that the Kings College Quiz has lost its interest for me since I discovered the annual Big Fat Quiz of the Year specials.
posted by interogative mood at 12:53 PM on December 23, 2019
posted by interogative mood at 12:53 PM on December 23, 2019
I always thought that Carrot in a Box was one of those games like Mornington Crescent where every round starts with a tedious discussion of which rulebook to use.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:10 PM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by betweenthebars at 1:10 PM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
Also Richard Osman's House of Games and The Taskmaster.
I'm obsessed with Taskmaster after discovering it recently.
posted by juv3nal at 2:14 PM on December 23, 2019 [7 favorites]
I'm obsessed with Taskmaster after discovering it recently.
posted by juv3nal at 2:14 PM on December 23, 2019 [7 favorites]
There are all these people whose faces I know from these sorts of clips, but I have no idea what their careers are outside of British game shows with 20 people in the audience.
Big fan of Sean Lock's early 00s sitcom 15 Storeys High
posted by anazgnos at 2:21 PM on December 23, 2019
Big fan of Sean Lock's early 00s sitcom 15 Storeys High
posted by anazgnos at 2:21 PM on December 23, 2019
I'm obsessed with Taskmaster after discovering it recently.
Mark my words, he'll be PM someday.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:58 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Mark my words, he'll be PM someday.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:58 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Some of my favorites:
What!? None of Bob Mortimer?!
posted by dobbs at 5:26 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
What!? None of Bob Mortimer?!
posted by dobbs at 5:26 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Taskmaster is the best and outside the UK the show’s makers have recently been posting whole seasons to their official channel. Unfortunately as usual the attempt to do a US version was a disaster.
Perhaps in the post Brexit US/UK trade deal we can finally get unfiltered access to UK TV along with the NHS.
posted by interogative mood at 5:39 PM on December 23, 2019
Perhaps in the post Brexit US/UK trade deal we can finally get unfiltered access to UK TV along with the NHS.
posted by interogative mood at 5:39 PM on December 23, 2019
I don't see how Taskmaster is different from The Apprentice, or vice versa. Educate me.
posted by sjswitzer at 5:42 PM on December 23, 2019
posted by sjswitzer at 5:42 PM on December 23, 2019
Wow, I really wish I hadn't played that link to Jimmy Carr's standup routine. Multiple rape jokes, cripple jokes, and "women are dumb" jokes, and I bailed four and a half minutes into a show that runs for an hour and a half.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:48 PM on December 23, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:48 PM on December 23, 2019 [3 favorites]
I don't see how Taskmaster is different from The Apprentice, or vice versa. Educate me.
I don't watch the apprentice but if what I understand about it is true:
1) the taskmaster contestants are all comedians, while they don't always hit, it's often funny, and most always trying to be
2) they're competing for a prize they know is worthless so the stakes are different. you're much more likely to see a contestant say "fuck it" and do something that has no chance of winning them the challenge just because it's good for a laugh
3) the challenges by and large aren't business orientated and are much more absurd
4) the tasks often reward lateral thinking while at other times capriciously penalize it as being cheating. some comedic moments come from the contestants arguing about this
also while on the topic of taskmaster, while some episodes are on the official youtube channel, many, many more are available on dailymotion. just search for example "taskmaster s03" for series 3 episodes.
posted by juv3nal at 7:17 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
I don't watch the apprentice but if what I understand about it is true:
1) the taskmaster contestants are all comedians, while they don't always hit, it's often funny, and most always trying to be
2) they're competing for a prize they know is worthless so the stakes are different. you're much more likely to see a contestant say "fuck it" and do something that has no chance of winning them the challenge just because it's good for a laugh
3) the challenges by and large aren't business orientated and are much more absurd
4) the tasks often reward lateral thinking while at other times capriciously penalize it as being cheating. some comedic moments come from the contestants arguing about this
also while on the topic of taskmaster, while some episodes are on the official youtube channel, many, many more are available on dailymotion. just search for example "taskmaster s03" for series 3 episodes.
posted by juv3nal at 7:17 PM on December 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
Sean Lock standup
I'm watching this now and I'm starting to worry that Sean Lock may be me.
posted by suetanvil at 8:13 PM on December 23, 2019
I'm watching this now and I'm starting to worry that Sean Lock may be me.
posted by suetanvil at 8:13 PM on December 23, 2019
Since tis’ the season of giving, may I present to you the all time children’s classic - Sean Locke’s The Tiger Who Came for a Pint.
“To the zoo, you silly bollocks!”
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:30 PM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
“To the zoo, you silly bollocks!”
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:30 PM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
Wow, I really wish I hadn't played that link to Jimmy Carr's standup routine. Multiple rape jokes, cripple jokes, and "women are dumb" jokes, and I bailed four and a half minutes into a show that runs for an hour and a half.
posted by Joe in Australia
He's a mixed bag, that Jimmy.
Sometimes he indulges way too much in the inner adolescent urge to shock with cheap crudity.
posted by Pouteria at 9:03 PM on December 23, 2019
posted by Joe in Australia
He's a mixed bag, that Jimmy.
Sometimes he indulges way too much in the inner adolescent urge to shock with cheap crudity.
posted by Pouteria at 9:03 PM on December 23, 2019
Jimmy Carr is sometimes hilarious, but crudity aside he's also been a tax evader that one.
posted by juv3nal at 9:32 PM on December 23, 2019
posted by juv3nal at 9:32 PM on December 23, 2019
Yeah, Jimmy Carr is an insult comic who's not too particular about punching down as well as up. His comedic schtick is being a loathsome person, where usually it's apparent that the true butt of the joke is people who unironically speak and act like he does, but the general problem of being ironically terrible (that is, that at a certain point it's the same thing as just being terrible) applies. I do think he's gotten much better at picking his targets over the last decade or so, though. If you watch his performance in older episodes of 8 Out Of 10 Cats, The Big Fat Quiz, or other shows from 10 years ago, he's almost unwatchable sometimes due to being such an asshole. More recently I feel he's much better at reserving the worst nastiness for those who deserve it. But definitely not always. There's a huge amount of fat-shaming in his material, for example, and often casual transphobia. A lot of the time I'm putting up with Jimmy Carr to enjoy the other comedians on his shows. But when he's good, he's really good.
Regarding the tax thing, in his defense, what Jimmy Carr did was tax avoidance, not tax evasion. That is, under the advice of his accountant, he took advantage of completely legal loopholes in the UK tax code to dramatically reduce the amount of tax that he paid, rather than fraudulently paying less tax than he owed. When called out on it, he very quickly admitted he was wrong, stopped using the loophole, and apologized on his TV program, setting himself up as the butt of jokes (not good-natured ones) from his colleagues to his face for months. I think he deserved the public shaming he got, but Jimmy Carr has frequently said that he deserved it, too. More recently, he's used his platform to advocate for reforming the UK tax code to close the kinds of loopholes that he took advantage of, pointing out that many of the public figures who most vocally criticized him (e.g. David Cameron) were later found to have exploited similar tax avoidance schemes themselves.
So while I think Jimmy Carr's tax avoidance was shitty behavior, his response since getting called out on it has been pretty much exactly what you'd want from a public figure trying to make amends for their poor choices. Personally I see a lot more to criticize in his frequent jokes mocking fat people and women who don't perform conventional femininity perfectly than in his past history of tax avoidance. I hope he'll continue to improve in these areas, because when he's not lazily mining these topics for boring, hackneyed, and mean-spirited jokes, he can be really funny. For example, his performance in the carrot-in-a-box bits here.
posted by biogeo at 10:46 PM on December 23, 2019 [8 favorites]
Regarding the tax thing, in his defense, what Jimmy Carr did was tax avoidance, not tax evasion. That is, under the advice of his accountant, he took advantage of completely legal loopholes in the UK tax code to dramatically reduce the amount of tax that he paid, rather than fraudulently paying less tax than he owed. When called out on it, he very quickly admitted he was wrong, stopped using the loophole, and apologized on his TV program, setting himself up as the butt of jokes (not good-natured ones) from his colleagues to his face for months. I think he deserved the public shaming he got, but Jimmy Carr has frequently said that he deserved it, too. More recently, he's used his platform to advocate for reforming the UK tax code to close the kinds of loopholes that he took advantage of, pointing out that many of the public figures who most vocally criticized him (e.g. David Cameron) were later found to have exploited similar tax avoidance schemes themselves.
So while I think Jimmy Carr's tax avoidance was shitty behavior, his response since getting called out on it has been pretty much exactly what you'd want from a public figure trying to make amends for their poor choices. Personally I see a lot more to criticize in his frequent jokes mocking fat people and women who don't perform conventional femininity perfectly than in his past history of tax avoidance. I hope he'll continue to improve in these areas, because when he's not lazily mining these topics for boring, hackneyed, and mean-spirited jokes, he can be really funny. For example, his performance in the carrot-in-a-box bits here.
posted by biogeo at 10:46 PM on December 23, 2019 [8 favorites]
Apologies, didn't know there was a distinction between evasion and avoidance. I'd agree he has been nothing but contrite about it since it came to light, though you'd expect someone in the public eye to be, wouldn't you?
posted by juv3nal at 12:35 AM on December 24, 2019
posted by juv3nal at 12:35 AM on December 24, 2019
I love young Benedict Wong in that sitcom. So good
posted by gnuhavenpier at 2:31 AM on December 24, 2019
posted by gnuhavenpier at 2:31 AM on December 24, 2019
I bailed four and a half minutes into a show that runs for an hour and a half
You'll have missed the Australian Pub Joke near the end then. Probably just as well. Some things, having been heard, cannot be unheard.
posted by flabdablet at 7:21 AM on December 24, 2019
You'll have missed the Australian Pub Joke near the end then. Probably just as well. Some things, having been heard, cannot be unheard.
posted by flabdablet at 7:21 AM on December 24, 2019
Here’s an interesting game article:
How to play with people who are better than you
All just in time for holiday parties!
Thanks
posted by xtian at 9:44 AM on December 24, 2019
How to play with people who are better than you
All just in time for holiday parties!
Thanks
posted by xtian at 9:44 AM on December 24, 2019
> If you watch his performance in older episodes of 8 Out Of 10 Cats, The Big Fat Quiz, or other shows from 10 years ago, he's almost unwatchable sometimes due to being such an asshole
Why do men like that get to have a career?
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:17 AM on December 24, 2019
Why do men like that get to have a career?
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:17 AM on December 24, 2019
"Why do men like that get to have a career?"
I'd guess that people are sophisticated enough to realize that a comedian who plays an asshole character is playing a character. Because there's a place for dark humor in difficult times, and even very offensive jokes can be very funny as long as we realize that we're all on the same side in real life.
I've only seen that special linked above, but Jimmy Carr doesn't strike me as being mean-spirited or angry. (That's something I can't say about US "insult comics" like Don Rickles or Robert Smigel and his dog puppet). He is very funny though, going way beyond mere "shock value." And I noticed that there seem to be a good number of topics that he won't touch, or that he treats pretty sensitively - he's not some kind of loose cannon.
If you're looking for "men like that" whose careers you can object to, there are far more worthy targets out there.
posted by Umami Dearest at 12:15 AM on December 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'd guess that people are sophisticated enough to realize that a comedian who plays an asshole character is playing a character. Because there's a place for dark humor in difficult times, and even very offensive jokes can be very funny as long as we realize that we're all on the same side in real life.
I've only seen that special linked above, but Jimmy Carr doesn't strike me as being mean-spirited or angry. (That's something I can't say about US "insult comics" like Don Rickles or Robert Smigel and his dog puppet). He is very funny though, going way beyond mere "shock value." And I noticed that there seem to be a good number of topics that he won't touch, or that he treats pretty sensitively - he's not some kind of loose cannon.
If you're looking for "men like that" whose careers you can object to, there are far more worthy targets out there.
posted by Umami Dearest at 12:15 AM on December 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
As for real-life topics, here's Jimmy Carr talking about the NHS during post-election news coverage after the recent British elections.
posted by Umami Dearest at 3:50 AM on December 25, 2019
posted by Umami Dearest at 3:50 AM on December 25, 2019
1adam12, I am having a really shitty holiday season because I wasn't able to go home and see my family like I usually do. I got to watch the kids open presents for about 10 minutes before Facetime stopped working and none of them even bothered to send me anything at all, so I got nothing for Christmas. But since you mentioned Taskmaster in this thread, I have been just *delighted* as I binge watch as many episodes as possible. I'm still sad, but it's hard to be really, really sad while you are simultaneously laughing your ass off.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:23 PM on December 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 12:23 PM on December 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Paraphrasing one of his better known “jokes”.... Jimmy Carr’s act is like food; not everyone gets it.
I’m suspect I am a monster for laughing at this kind of joke; yet I still laugh.
posted by interogative mood at 1:10 PM on December 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I’m suspect I am a monster for laughing at this kind of joke; yet I still laugh.
posted by interogative mood at 1:10 PM on December 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
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